Surveilling the public sphere

Happenings in the public sphere were considered as major threats to the socialist order of society in Hungary from the late 1960s up until the mid 1970s. The State Security mobilized their agents to surveil these activities in order to find arguments to legally ban them from the public. The chapter analyses the parallel strategies of the State Security and the happeners – both acting secretly but both targeting the public sphere – on behalf of State Security Reports on the first Hungarian Happening 1966. Kata Krasznahorkai concludes that tracking the surveillance radius of these activities indicates a new dividing line within the public sphere.